There are many known embodiments of bags for packaging and marketing food products. Particularly well known are breathable bags designed for packaging and marketing fruit and vegetable products such as citrus fruit, root vegetables and suchlike. These bags, unlike conventional plastic bags, allow the product to breathe, lengthening its storage time and enabling the buyer to inspect the appearance, touch and smell of their contents.
These bags are normally manufactured from a continuous tubular element, made from a flexible and preferably heat-sealable material, generally in the form of mesh, cut transversally to form portions of tubular mesh.
During the packaging process of the product, the mouths at each end of these portions of tubular mesh are closed separately by staples or welding. To close the mouths at each end of the portions of tubular mesh by heat sealing, they are conventionally provided with strips of a heat-sealable material in pairs, applied to respective sides of the tubular mesh at each end thereof, which are subsequently joined by heat sealing, the end portion of the tubular mesh being partially melted and embedded between the two strips of the same pair. In some variants of bags, the strips applied to the opposite ends of the same side of the tubular mesh are continuously joined and optionally fastened by points to the corresponding side of the tubular mesh.
This operation requires the use of sufficient heat from outside to melt the material that constitutes the inner face of the strips and the tubular mesh, the products contained in the bag then being closed therein without it being possible to remove them unless the bag is broken.
It should be stated that the aforementioned continuous tubular mesh is occasionally made from a flat mesh, the longitudinal edges of which are joined to form the continuous tubular mesh.
Spanish utility model No. U1050533 discloses a bag like those described above, the mouths at the ends of which have been closed by heat sealing the strips of heat-sealable material. In the bag disclosed therein one of the strips has been cut at each end, the central portion of said strip having been removed. The remainder of the strip, the ends of which are firmly secured at respective ends of the bag and solidly fastened thereto by heat-sealed points, determines a handle whereby to hold the bag.
The object of utility model No. U9401000 presents, among others, the drawback that, when the bag is completely filled with objects, the handle is in a tight position very close to the surface of the bag, which makes it difficult to hold and use.
Furthermore, it has been seen that in bags with a large capacity, where the strip is of a similar length to the bag, the relatively long length of the bag and the strip make the bag difficult to transport when it is suspended from the handle, as the width of the bag is not significantly reduced and it is at too low a height, hanging at knee-level or below the knees, so that when the bag rotates slightly it can easily knock the user's legs.